I Will Be Heard: The Legacy of William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator

THU, DEC 3, 2015
(43:17)

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A commemoration on the 150th anniversary of the final issue of William Lloyd Garrison’s renowned abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. In the pages of his newspaper, Garrison led a crusade against slavery and for the rights of black Americans for 35 years - beginning on January 1, 1831 until the shuttering of the paper on December 29, 1865 following ratification of the 13th Amendment. During the lecture, Dr. Donald Yacovone will examine The Liberator’s uncompromising advocacy for equality and Garrison’s critical role in shaping politics in the antebellum era and beyond, with a focus on the role of the “agitator” and free press in a democracy. Image: By Hammatt Billings, artist for the masthead of The Liberator (15 December 1854) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Donald Yacovone Ph.D., is the former Manager of Research and Program Development at the Hutchins Center’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and a recipient of the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, the highest honor awarded by Harvard in the field of African and African American studies. He earned his Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate University and has taught at Pitzer College, the University of Arizona, and Millersville University of Pennsylvania. He was an editor at the Black Abolitionist Papers project before becoming the senior associate editor at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where he founded and edited the Massachusetts Historical Review. An expert in the antislavery movement, Yacovone is about to publish his eighth book: _Wendell Phillips, Social Justice and the Powers of the Past_, a co-edited essay collection for Louisiana State University Press. His contribution is entitled: “Race, Radicalism, and Remembering Wendell Phillips.” His previous work includes _Samuel Joseph May and the Dilemmas of the Liberal Persuasion_ (Temple); _A Voice of Thunder: The Civil War Letters of George E. Stephens_ (Illinois), _Lincoln on Race and Slavery_ (Princeton), with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and in 2013 co-authored with Gates, _The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross_ (SmileyBooks), the companion volume to the popular PBS series.